Class JlcLiM^ 
Bo ok -«**■ 

PRHSHNTED BY 



/ 



The White-Ribbon Club 



• 

If,;. f-l iff 

A DISCOURSE 

PREACHED IN 

Fair Hayen, Vermont, July 14, 1878, 

BY 

REV. MYRON A. MUNSON. 

{Published in The Vermont Chronicle, March 15, 1879.) 



SPRINGFIELD, MASS. : 

PRESS OF SPRINGFIELD PRINTING COMPANY. 
1882. 



I . -THE WHITE-RIBBON CLUB. 
Preached in Fair Haven, Vt., July 14, 1878. Published in the Vermont Chronicle, March 15, 1879; 



a- 



"Thanks for your very interesting and correct views on reforms and reform societies. 
Wright, Professor at Oberlin. 



-G. Frederick 



INSCRIBED, 

HAPPILY AND AFFECTIONATELY, 

TO 

Edward G. Munson, 
H. Willard Munson, 
H. Wilson Munson, 
Samuel L. Munson, and 
Cleora F. M. Judd, 

By their Brother. 



I 



DISCOURSE. 



John xx : 12 — "Two angels in white." Revelation iii : 4 — "They shall 
walk with me in white." 

Suppose a large town named Excelsior — inhabited by in- 
telligent people — among those people many amiable de- 
sires and estimable intentions. At various times different 
sections of that community have awakened to the convic- 
tion that there were customs in their midst which might 
wholesomely be changed ; and at such various times these 
different clusters of people have organized to effect a re- 
formation of such abuses. 

A friend and myself spent a week in Excelsior, and 
made it a part of our business to visit — on successive even- 
ings — the various sorts of reform clubs which were exist- 
ing. 

Our first visit was made on Tuesday evening — to the 
Temperance Reform Club. We found all the members of 
this club wearing badges of blue ribbon. The bouquets 
exhibited a profusion of blue-tinted blossoms — heliotrope, 
myrtle, etc. ' The gems worn by those present were sap- 
phire and turquois. On the walls there were portraits of 
Murphy and Reynolds, of Miss Willard, Gough and Frost ; 
and in a conspicuous place was hung an impressive emblem- 
atic picture entitled, "The Black Valley Railroad." We 
had been seated but a few moments when the president 
introduced the speaker of the evening. 

"We are assembled," said he, "to contend against the 
abuse of alcoholic drinks, the most momentous evil of our 
age. The indulgence in such drinks turns men of sense 
into silly and incompetent ones ; it wastes time and wastes 
property ; it impairs, eventually destroys, the esteem in 
which one has been held by society ; it brings bitterness 
and shame to wife and children, to brother and sister, to 



6 



The White-Ribbon Club. 



father and mother. Fellow-citizens, can there be in any 
heart such hardness, such recklessness ? It is even so. I 
have myself felt the bite of this adder. Some of you have 
felt it ; some of you still feel the sting of its cruel fangs. 
Let us, my friends, as one man, declare eternal hostility to 
this dread foe. Some of you are not wearing the blue rib- 
bon ; I invite you to put it on ; come forward and put 
it on." 

On Wednesday evening we visited the Honesty Reform 
Club. The members of this club wore a badge of orange. 
There was a display of bouquets in which flowers of an 
orange tint predominated. On the walls of the hall there 
were several mottoes, such as " Honesty is the best pol- 
icy;" "An honest man 's the noblest work of God," etc. 
There were two large pictures, so hung as to be in a good 
light ; one of them presented that scene in the old spelling- 
book — a young thief in an apple-tree whom an old man 
pelts with grass, but at length with stones ; the other pic- 
ture presented a Fairhaven nobleman in the act of measur- 
ing oats which he had sold — giving the half-bushel an ad- 
monitory kick that it might be sure to give abundant 
measure. 

" We have met," said the speaker of the evening, " to 
deliberate upon the alarming and disastrous prevalence of 
dishonesty. Is it not the crying evil of the age ? O tern- 
pora ! O mores ! How few are the laborers who are faith- 
ful in rendering service. How few are the manufacturers 
who produce goods which are what they seem to be. In 
your newspaper, how few are the advertisements which 
are one-half, one-quarter true. Witness the dishonesties 
which accompany failures in business. Witness the nu- 
merous and astounding defalcations in places of trust. In- 
tegrity is ignored, is despised, is spit upon, is trampled in 
the mud ! Toward what end are we hastening, fellow- 
citizens ? 

" Let us solemnly pledge ourselves, every man, to be 
stanchly, transparently honest. Let us use our influence, 
earnestly and persistently, to multiply Honesty Reform 



The Anti-Laziness Club. 



7 



Clubs throughout all the land, that the public conscience 
may be awakened, that even self-love may take alarm, and 
this great tide of corruption be effectually resisted — trium- 
phantly banished. Let all the world see your colors, good 
friends ; put on the orange ribbon ! " 

On Thursday evening we visited another of the reform- 
halls, that of the Anti-Laziness Club. The badge of this 
league was green. Their gem was the emerald ; it sparkled 
on their fingers and on their bosoms. The hall of this club 
was decorated with green and evergreen foliage. Several 
ornaments of beryl were noticed. On the walls there were 
various mottoes. I copied the following : " Seest thou a 
man diligent in his business ? he shall stand before 
Kings." 

" Satan finds some mischief still 
For idle hands to do." 

An address was made by the president. While he was 
speaking, I made the following memoranda : 

" We have fallen upon evil times. ' Man's chief end is 
to shirk labor. People are living by their wits instead of 
by work. As this plan is not the divine one, it slumps and 
stumbles. What can that Honesty. Club, what can that 
Temperance Club over there do, until people have been re- 
formed out of their indolence and idleness ? Do you ex- 
pect an idler to be honest ? Can you expect an idler to be 
temperate ? If people will not do what they ought, they 
will certainly do something else— what they ought not. 

" Here, then, is the field on which we are to fight the 
devil. Let us have a habit of being busy, and of exerting 
ourselves. Let us pledge ourselves to encourage such 
habits in others until they shall become prevalent and pop- 
ular. As old Cato closed every speech with ' Carthage 
must be destroyed ' — delenda est Carthago — so let us close 
every speech and begin every speech with — 'The devil's 
nursery must be destroyed.' Good people, that all whom 
you meet may understand that you have enlisted in this 
cause, put on the green ribbon." 

On Friday evening we visited the Anti-Extravagance 



8 



The White- Ribbon Club. 



Reform Club. The members of this society wore an 
indigo badge. Their gravity of countenance indicated 
that they deemed their mission a very serious one. A 
third of the members had passed through bankruptcy. 

A speech was made by one of this class. "The fact is," 
said he, u we are living too fast. If a man spends more 
than his income, he will make shipwreck, of course. It 
was so with me. Several of my acquaintances lived in 
brown-stone houses, dressed their families in splendor, and 
kept elegant carriages ; I undertook to live in the same 
style, with the same scale of expenditure, though where I 
had one dollar of income, they had ten. In eleven months 
I was bankrupt. How insanely I had acted ! But our 
communities are full of similar doings. Why should a 
servant-girl with an income of three dollars a week try to 
dress as expensively as her employer who has fifty dollars 
a week at her command ? Why should a clerk with $700 
salary, dress twice as expensively as his employers with an 
income of $7,000 ? Why should young ladies make them- 
selves so expensive that judicious men contemplating mat- 
rimony are frightened away from it ? Ladies and gentle- 
men, members of the Anti-Extravagance Association, let 
us energize this movement to the utmost — and let us not 
rest until the indigo ribbon shall be worn by every man, 
woman and child in this borough, nay, by every man, woman 
and child from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic ocean." 

On Saturday evening the Ninth Commandment Reform 
Club was visited. The badge of this society was yellow. 
Many of the members wore ornaments of amber. On the 
mantel were beautiful vases of jasper. One motto had 
been inscribed on the premises of the club as many as 
twenty times, namely : " Speak of others as you would 
wish others to speak of you." Another was — " The tongue 
is an unruly evil ; keep a bridle on it." There were 
several allegorical pictures in the hall ; one portraying 
envy, another malice, another detraction, another slander, 
A very affecting picture was that which represented a 
maiden — the sunbeam is not purer — as having been mur- 



The Ninth- Commandment Club. 



9 



dered by envy, through the agency of some devilish insinu- 
ation. It should be added that whenever any member of 
the Ninth Commandment Club entered the hall or left it, 
he repeated : " Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
thy neighbor." 

The speaker of the evening discoursed in this wise : 
"The warfare which we urge is a difficult one; but our 
victory will supremely affect human happiness. A citizen 
is nominated for public office ; are his excellences admit- 
ted by politicians of the rival party ? How often, on the 
contrary, are incidents which are not only innocent, but 
commendable, and known to be such, so presented to the 
public through the press and from the stump, as to look 
either wicked or silly. These politicians bear false witness 
against their neighbor. Then, again, one gets offended at 
a fellow-citizen. He has seen no occasion to disparage his 
character or conduct hitherto ; but he now unearths mat- 
ters which he had formerly regarded as indifferent or com- 
mendable, and so warps them, so colors them, so associates 
them, that they appear like things abominable. He bears 
false witness against his neighbor. Yet, again, a malig- 
nant gossip goes into business. She tells no square lies — 
she is too much of an artist for that. She is envious of a 
neighbor who has a handsomer face than herself and keeps 
a finer carriage, and when a new-comer makes some in- 
quiry of the gossip in regard to this neighbor whom she 
envies, the reply may be : 'I don't want to talk against 
my neighbors, but people think that she is no better than 
she ought to be.' A very innocent statement — who is bet- 
ter than she ought to be ? Yet that statement masks as 
black, as horrible a lie, as was ever told in hell. It is a 
wholesale violation of the ninth commandment. 

"Now a happy world," continued the speaker, " means 
a world in which detraction has been exterminated. Let 
us, then, join hearts and voices in prosecuting this war 
until the wickedness and cruelty of which we are speak- 
ing shall be abolished. Let there be no peace for any- 
body until everybody wears the yellow ribbon." 



10 



The White-Ribbon Club. 



On Monday evening we visited the Adoration Reform 
Club. The badge of this club was violet. The gems of 
the membership were mostly amethysts. There was much 
loveliness in the display of violets and pansies. " How 
disheartening," exclaimed a speaker, " to witness the lack 
of veneration for whatever is most venerable ! How alarm- 
ing to witness the lack of reverence for that august Being 
in whose hand our breath is, and by whose word the 
heavens were made ! Are we so like statues of stone that 
we will not uncover our heads in the presence of the Lord 
of lords and King of kings ? More, and worse : Men widely 
profane his name, profane his day, profane his ordinances. 
Towards what end, fellow-citizens, is this irreverence and 
profanation drifting ? 

" Let us endeavor," he continued, "let us endeavor with 
heart, hand, voice and purse, to engender a spirit of adora- 
tion in every rational being ; nay, let us, with energy, with 
self-denial, with enthusiasm, multiply adoration leagues all 
over the world — and let us persist in this undertaking until 
the great Jehovah shall be universally adored ! When the 
violet ribbon, the dear badge of our order, shall be worn 
by every son and daughter of Adam, then, and not till 
then, may we quit this field." 

On Tuesday evening we visited the seventh of this 
circle of reform clubs ; it was known as the Beneficence 
Club. Its badge was a red ribbon, and its gem was the 
ruby. The speaker of the evening exclaimed : "Alas for 
the dull-hearted, the cold-hearted indifference to the calls 
of charity ! How many are in need of being helped in 
some respect, and how urgent are many of those needs. Do 
the wants which make these appeals to our humanity 
awaken much compassion ? There is misery in the hu- 
man family, our family ; do we suffer with it — in some 
practical way ? O for a generous, active, self-sacrificing 
philanthropy ! We are not to be Abbots of Bamba, are 
we ? What the Abbot of Bamba cannot eat, he gives away 
for the good of his soul. Let us recognize," continued 
the speaker, "in some active and fruitful way, the brother- 



The Et-Ccetera Club. 



hood of man, and let us urge this recognition upon others, 
upon all others — multiplying our Beneficence Clubs until 
they shall fill the world." 

This visit concluded our series. We heard of one other 
club, the Et-Ceetera, but were unable to visit it. We under- 
stood that its function was to reform whatever bad thing 
was not included within the scope of any of the other re- 
form clubs, such as ill-temper, licentiousness, cowardice and 
discourtesy. Its colors were deep crimson and lavender- 
gray. 

My hearers, you are wondering how this survey of seven 
or eight reform clubs is related to " two angels in white," 
or to " walking in white ? " But we shall see. It is quite 
obvious that in human life, whether that of an individual 
or of a community of individuals, there is a great deal of 
moral unsoundness and moral derangement. There is no 
branch of this manifold disorder ^whether intemperance, 
licentiousness, dishonesty, irreverence, or whatever -you 
will, which ought not to be destroyed. There is no one of 
us who ought not to wear, metaphorically at least, the red 
ribbon, the orange, the yellow, the green, the blue, the in- 
digo, the violet, the crimson and lavender. But that 
scheme looks somewhat burdensome and distracting, does 
it not ? You inquire, cannot some scheme be devised 
which will do something to economize attention and exer- 
tion ? I propose a White Ribbon Club ; you will under- 
stand the proposal in a moment. When a sunbeam shines 
through a hole in your window-shutter, it is white. Let 
that streak of light fall on a glass-prism and it will be 
split up into as many as seven different splinters, each of 
a different color, and all together presenting the different 
hues of the rainbow — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, in- 
digo and violet. We may add that by certain cunning de- 
vices Herschel was enabled to discern on the red ray a 
margin of deep crimson, and on the violet a margin of 
lavender-gray. Now let these various colored rays into 
which the sunbeam was decomposed, fall on a convex lens, 
and they will be recombined into a single beam of white 



12 



The White-Ribbon Club. 



light. Accordingly as white includes with the utmost 
nicety all other colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, in- 
digo, violet, and, if you please, crimson and lavender, so 
does the white ribbon represent wholly, completely, abso- 
lutely, every badge of every one of the rainbow colors, from 
red to violet, or from crimson to lavender. 

Such a White Ribbon Club would not be simply a Tem- 
perance Club, though it would be that ; nor simply an 
Honesty Club, though it would be that ; nor an Anti-Lazi- 
ness Club, though it would be that ; and at the same time, 
an Anti-Extravagance Club, a Ninth Commandment Club, 
an Adoration Club, a Beneficence Club, and an Et-Caetera 
Club. Some descriptive appellation broad enough to in- 
clude all these particular elements should be appropriated 
to this new institution, as for example, the Conscience 
Club, the Righteousness Club or the Anti-Sin Club. 

Its peculiarity, as you perceive, is that its members 
make it their supreme aim to do right in respect to 
everything — to do right in respect to the use of intoxi- 
cating beverages, to do right in transacting business, to do 
right in respect to activity and diligence, to do right in the 
matter of expenditures, to do right in speaking of others, 
to do right in regard to minding our Heavenly Father, to 
do right in respect to the claims which the needy, the 
suffering and the sorrowful present ; to do right in respect 
to everything which concerns us, body, sensibilities, in- 
tellect and soul, ourselves and others, the human and the 
divine, the present and the future. Why not do our 
whole duty ? Let anybody answer. We have a tree of 
evil ; it has many branches ; shall we have the unwisdom 
to get a ladder and climb up to the branch of intemperance 
and cut that off — consenting that all the other branches of 
our tree of evil shall remain ? Why not bring down the 
whole tree at once ? Is it not more economical ? Is it 
not nobler ? Can you consent, deliberately, that any 
branch of moral evil, any whatever, shall continue to grow ? 
To do one's whole duty — that is reasonable, that is honor- 
able ; is there reason or honor in any other course ? Down 



A White-Ribbon Club. 



'3 



with the whole tree ! King David's tree of sin comprised 
a branch of licentiousness and another of man-killing, but 
he was too sensible to climb up and cut off those branches ; 
he cut down the whole tree. " Create in me," he ex- 
claimed, " a clean heart, Q God, and renew a right spirit 
within me." 

Do you choose to treat yourself in any respect unbecom- 
ingly ? Do you choose to treat your fellow-men in any 
respect unbecomingly ? Do you choose to treat your 
Heavenly Father in any respect unbecomingly ? Do you 
choose to treat your Saviour unbecomingly ? To answer 
these questions intelligently, appreciatively, whole-heart- 
edly, in the negative, is to become a member of the White 
Ribbon Club. It is to choose not to neglect any portion 
of duty ; it is virtually to accept a correct plan of life, the 
only one which is perfect — that of the All-wise and All- 
good. In recognition of the worthiness of this divine plan, 
the chaplain of the White Ribbon Club offers the follow- 
ing prayer : "Our Father * * * Thy will be done ! " 

Recurring to our text, we observe that the color worn 
by saint and angel is neither orange, nor violet, nor laven- 
der, but white. 



A BRIEF THEOLOGICAL LECTURE, 
Presented at Fair Haven, Vt., 
Sunday Evening, January 26, 1879, 

BY 

REV. M. A. MUNSON. 

{Published in The Vermont Chronicle, March 22, 1879.) 



LECTURE. 



Holiness consists in the choice of that Being who is 
greatest and best, together with the welfare of the entire 
circle of intelligent beings in the universe. As that great- 
est and best Being is God, and as his will is that the gen- 
eral welfare of the universe should be effected, to choose 
God, to yield our will to his, to walk in his way, is to be 
holy. 

Sin consists in the supreme choice of pleasing one's self, 
in the choice of one's self and a limited circle of worldly 
interests, instead of the Author of all good, and that pur- 
suit of the general well-being which the Supreme Governor 
requires. 

The preference of God and his requirements, rather 
than of self and self-pleasing, is holiness ; the preference 
of self and of self-pleasing rather than God and his all-per- 
fect requirements is sin. 

The sin of one unreconciled to God — one whose general 
course of life is unconsecrated — resides primarily in the 
fact that it is his general, prevailing, governing choice to 
live as he pleases rather than as the Supreme and All-per- 
fect Governor — Author of all good — requires him to live. 
This general spirit of disobedience is continuous. It is in 
a constant readiness to refuse God's glorious requirements. 
A rebel against a human government is an enemy to the 
government while asleep at midnight, and while at church 
on Sunday, and while paying his taxes — a rebel all the 
time. And the government must regard him as an enemy 
until his attitude is radically changed and he becomes 
loyal. So one unreconciled to God is a sinner all the time. 
It is his generic choice — or to speak according to the phil- 
osophic conception, it is his constantly repeated choice — 
to maintain the attitude of a sinner. 
3 



i8 



The Goodness that is Ungodly. 



Under this general choice, there are millions of subor- 
dinate choices, and none of them are holy. When any 
question that is before the will makes it necessary that it 
prefer and elect the divine way or the sinning, it elects the 
sinning way. On a Sunday morning a sinner says: "I 
will attend public worship to-day ; " conscience whispers, 
" You ought to go with a new, Christian, obedient spirit ; " 
he chooses sinfully — as he does in every other case in 
which the holy or the sinful arises ; he decides that he will 
go to church in his usual spirit of disobedience — with his 
mind bent upon doing as he pleases rather than as he 
ought, that is, as pleases God. 

Suppose now an act disconnected from moral action, as 
the exercise of a simple, involuntary sensibility. A mother, 
who is seeking to live apart from God in the world, loves 
her child, cares for it tenderly, denies herself that she may 
make it comfortable ; that exercise of affection — in so far 
as it is involuntary, and so long as it is dissociated from 
the choice and the refusal of the loyalty which is divinely 
required — is not sinful. Neither is it holy ; it is not what 
is due ; it is not what is required. The highest law re- 
quires that she be without the spirit of disobedience while 
loving and caring for her child, that she be a Christian in 
the exercise of the maternal instincts. Accordingly, such 
love and care as I have indicated are not holy. 

I repeat that while involuntary affections and emotions 
are neither sinful nor holy, the sinner who exercises such 
affections and emotions is acting the part of a sinner while 
he exercises them, in refusing to have a loyal, godly, Chris- 
tian spirit while he exercises them. I repeat, further, that 
what God requires of a mother is not that she exercise 
love, but that she exercise the love of a Christian mother. 
And what supreme duty requires, again, is not that a citi- 
zen cultivate patriotism, but that he cultivate the patriot- 
ism of a godly citizen. Every government must look 
upon a rebel, however well-dressed, as an enemy. 

What the divine approval and disapproval are really con- 
cerned with is the man himself. His doings are scrutin- 



The Goodness that is Ungodly. 



19 



izecl primarily with a view to determining the quality of 
the doer. If the doer of the doings maintains the position 
and attitude of a sinner, what room is there for inquiring 
whether or not God accepts of the doings ? 

But suppose now that a sinner ceases to make his own 
imperfect and perverted inclination the supreme law. Sup- 
pose that under the influence of the divine spirit inclining 
him to become what he ought, his will yields to the 
supreme will and he is reconciled to God, wherein has 
been the essential change ? In the choice, the generic 
choice ; the soul prefers and elects comprehensively, once 
for all, the will of God as the law of its life. The general 
and supreme choice of doing as an imperfect and perverted 
being chooses, that is, as may please one's self, is super- 
seded by the general and supreme choice of doing as may 
please the Being who is all-perfect and whose right it is to 
rule. This is the generic choice oLthe way that is holy. 

Co-existing with this comprehensive choice of being and 
doing precisely what one ought, there may be — under the 
stress of tempting influences— subordinate individual choices 
here and there which are not in accord with the supreme 
choice ; they are sinful. But these occasional instances 
of sin do not destroy the general, the habitual purpose of 
being holy. If a citizen whose comprehensive and pre-. 
vailing purpose is to be a loyal and patriotic citizen, cheats 
the national government out of a postage-stamp, it is justly 
offended : but it does not class him with those whose pre- 
vailing choice is disloyal and rebellious ; it does not require 
him to take the oath of allegiance. 

One point more. May not a sinner pray ? Yes, and he 
ought to, but not sinfully ; he must not offer a sinning 
prayer. If a man prays while it is a part of his plan to 
keep on in the way of disobedience to God, that is absur- 
dity. May one come to the Lord and say : " O Lord, I am 
a rebel against thine authority and intend to continue re- 
bellious ; please to cancel my debt and write my name in 
the Book of Life ! " Who does not appreciate the incon- 
gruity of these ideas ? The sinner must pray renouncing 



20 



The Goodness that is Ungodly. 



the sinning path in which he has walked ; he must pray 
ceasing to entertain the spirit of disobedience ; he must 
pray with the choice of praying holily ; he must pray 
with the intention of praying as Christians pray. There 
is nothing sinful which is pleasing to God. Sinful pray- 
ing and sinful ploughing, and sinful refusing to plough 
and to pray, all are alike evil. " The way of transgressors 
is hard." If you are finding that out, might you not do 
better to try the way of the Lord ? 



UBAg13 



